Page 106 of Mortdale

My face scrunched up in a grimace. “I’m sure you’ll forgive me.”

“Yeah, yeah. By the way,” he groaned, peeling his face off the broken carriage wall and handing me a folded piece of cloth. “She left this.”

“Who?”

“The Sybil woman.” He rubbed his cheek. “I mean witch. Just before she left, she put this between the rolls of fabric.”

I grabbed it off his hand. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I thought you maybe didn’t want Logan to know about it.”

Pausing, I looked up at him. “You must have a thing for punishment.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he murmured, nursing his broken jaw.

In red lipstick, Sybil had written: Crimson Weaver has an army of undead.

It hit me all at once.

The Bloodletting was a ploy, a distraction, a weak facade witches had built to shield themselves—all this time, the Crimson Weaver had been using it to disguise the fact that we’d been harvesting an army, creating new undead by using the chalice. This wasn’t just Agnes’s work. It had started before her.

Chapter 20

Willow

Liam refused to give me any news on Logan. Christof would turn away at any question pertaining to his precious duke. And Theodora was suddenly a dry well of words when it came to my husband.

On the second day since he’d left to deal with the Basilica, he sent me a letter. With his room key attached to it.

I hear you’re behaving. It’s such a shame I’m missing the sight, the asshole had written.

Both Piper and I had taken every single advantage that came with the said key. There wasn’t a single corner in his room without some shape of a mess. Three of his ties were wrapped around my neck. I was wearing one of his shirts and a pair of his pants fastened tight around my waist with another one of his ties. Piper was also in a very similar state. Engulfed in one of his shirts, the sleeves folded over a hundred times to reach her chubby tiny elbows. A very pretty chartreuse tie was around her head as a hairband, fastened on top in a neat bow. She was drenched in his vetiver cologne and I had used and abused every inch of his bergamot-scented soaps and balms.

Piper, who was currently laying beside me under her uncle’s bed, had found a new fascination, which involved my very expensive collection of bones. The little critter lover couldn’t spin without making everyone within a mile dizzy, but she somehow could name almost one hundred and seven bones so far. With some leeway, of course. Because maleuth (as in malleus), incuth (as in incus), and thtapeth (as in stapes), did have the built-in requirement that you’d be able to pronounce the ‘s’s’.

She cradled a tiny jar against her chest that had trapped the tiniest tooth—her first collectible piece. “Central incisor,” she repeated, looking at me with her tiny, hopeful golden eyes. “Is that good?”

“It’s very good,” I told her. “Gets like…five scores.”

The smallest gasp left her. “How much for three of them?” she asked, showing me five of her fingers.

I lowered two of her fingers. “Let’s not go plucking our teeth, Pipe. I know it is tempting. I could barely wait to get my hands on my third molars. All the pain wasn’t worth it. They’re as good as second molars.”

“Okay,” she said, a little deflated.

Twirling her tiny strand of a fringe around my finger, I asked, “Do you think I'm weird, Pipe?”

“Yes,” she replied with zero hesitation, her little tongue poking through the missing tooth. “I want to be just like you when I grow up.” She sighed, her eyes surrendering to sleep. “And have my own bones.”

“Will you even remember me when you grow up?” I whispered, tapping my finger on her chubby cheek. “I’ll probably be just a hazy memory.” I kissed her brow. “You can have all my bones when I’m gone. I want you to have them.”

Thomas, who’d been tied at the foot of the bed with a black tie after too many comments about cooking Piper, slowly slipped into his real shape, freeing himself. “Your vampire is here. He’s hungry, too.”

What?

Wait. Was Irena with him?

The thought made my elbow turn into jelly, and my forehead met the ground with a bang.